Shared Struggles Stories from Parents and Pediatricians Caring for Children with Serious Illnesses: The Grand Rounds Edition
Meet the presenters:
Barry Markovitz, MD, MPH, has served as Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles since 2018, providing administrative and clinical leadership in alignment with the institution’s mission, vision, values and goals.
Dr. Markovitz joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 2006 to head the hospital’s Division of Critical Care Medicine and serve as Medical Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. He is also a professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Anesthesiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Markovitz is Board-certified in anesthesiology and pediatric anesthesiology, as well as pediatrics and pediatric critical care medicine. He has been involved in numerous research studies related to intensive care throughout his career, including transfusions, relationships between Pediatric ICU volume and outcomes, and the treatment of sepsis and acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Dr. Markovitz is a member of the Pediatric Section of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society, and he has served on the Executive Committee of the critical care section of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He serves on several editorial boards and was Chair of the Research Committee of VPS, LLC (Virtual Pediatric Systems), an international pediatric ICU quality and research collaborative. He also recently completed a term as Chair of the Scientific Committee of PALISI (Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators), the largest pediatric critical care research network in North America.
Dr. Markovitz earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and received a master’s in public health from St. Louis University. He did his pediatric internship and residency at Children’s Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University Medical Center, and an anesthesiology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Markovitz completed his fellowship in pediatric anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Ann F. Schrooten
Ann is the mother of four children. Her third child, Jack, was born with a rare congenital muscular dystrophy that affected his muscles, eyes and brain. Jack had a trach and required the support of a ventilator; he was non-verbal, non-mobile and required around the clock care. Jack died eight years ago at the age of 15 from complications of his disease. Ann has experienced hundreds of encounters with doctors and other medical professionals, beginning with Jack’s premature birth and complicated first year where he spent many months in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, through his diagnosis odyssey, the many procedures, surgeries and hospitalizations he endured, his transition to palliative care and, finally, to hospice care at the end of his life.
She co-authored a chapter titled “Parent Perspectives on Neuromuscular Disorders: From Diagnosis, to Parenting and Living With, to Advance Care Planning and Preparing for Death” in Neuromuscular Disorders in Children: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Management (Mac Keith Press 2019). She was a parent advisor for the development of videos portraying family experiences with decisions about home mechanical ventilation (Johns Hopkins) and the related article, “Family Experiences Deciding for and Against Pediatric Home Ventilation” published in The Journal of Pediatrics (2021) and she is the parent co-editor with Dr. Barry Markovitz of Shared Struggles – Stories from Parents and Pediatricians Caring for Children with Serious Illnesses (Springer 2021).
Ann has a Bachelor of Science from Arizona State University and a Juris Doctorate from University of Arizona. She is an estate planning and probate attorney. She is the founder of The Willow Tree Foundation, an Arizona non-profit organization that funds respite for parents of medically fragile children. She lives in Chandler, Arizona with her husband and their three adult children, and she enjoys hiking the many beautiful trails in Arizona.
